Furnace 3 - Death Sentence

by Alexander Gordon Smith

  ‘It’s down,’ I said, eliciting another round of vocal celebrations. ‘It’s right there.’

  ‘Then let’s not keep it waiting any longer!’ replied Simon, selecting a pick and taking up his post by the doors. He rammed the blade into the gap and levered it in the same way Bodie had, forcing the elevator doors open another centimetre or so. This time Zee was ready, holding a section of steel frame from one of the bunks that had been thrown onto the yard. As soon as the doors had parted far enough he slotted the bar between them, letting Simon pull out his pickaxe. The mechanism protested with a squeal, but the wedge held.

  ‘Little more and we should be able to fit through,’ said Bodie, nervously sliding his hand between the elevator doors as if making sure the gap wasn’t an illusion. It was as he was pulling it out again that we heard it, a noise like a distant jet engine taking off, echoing down the elevator shaft. We all took a nervous step back.

  ‘They must be pulling it back up,’ somebody said, but I shook my head.

  ‘No, that isn’t the elevator,’ Zee answered before I could open my mouth. ‘It’s something else.’

  The sound came again, this time reminding me of the growls and screams we’d heard rising up from the levels below. Maybe the shafts were linked somehow, by air vents or something. Maybe it was the same noise we were hearing now.

  Only this was louder, a roar that reminded me of dragons. And it was definitely coming from above us.

  ‘Forget it,’ said Bodie. ‘Don’t mean nothing. Black-suits up top are probably just trying to scare us, y’know.’

  Zee moved to the crack between the doors, peering into the bruised light beyond.

  ‘Has anyone not wondered why the elevator hasn’t been pulled up?’ he asked. ‘Surely that’s the first thing the warden would do, stop us getting inside and boosting out.’

  ‘Maybe he can’t operate it from down there,’ I suggested. ‘We did blow up his control room.’

  ‘Say what?’ exclaimed Bodie.

  ‘Even if the warden can’t,’ Zee went on, ignoring him, ‘whoever’s posted in the Black Fort must still be able to work it. And I don’t get why they haven’t lifted it out of our reach.’

  ‘Like I said,’ Bodie interrupted, nudging Zee out of the way and lifting his pick again, ‘forget it. Fact is the elevator’s down here and the longer we spend talking crap then the more likely it is they will pull it up.’

  He slotted the pick through the doors and leant against the handle, Simon adding his bulk to the effort. Their groans of exertion almost matched the grinding squeal of metal in volume as the gap widened another fraction. Somebody ran forward with a toilet seat,squeezing it between the doors and stamping on it until it was firmly wedged in place. When we all stood back we could see the interior of the lift, our ticket out of here, bathed in tremulous yellow light.

  ‘Grab that side,’ barked Bodie, taking hold of one elevator door and pulling hard, throwing all his body weight into it to try and jerk the metal open. Simon joined him, the two boys like a tug-of-war team in the last throes of battle. I moved to the other side, hooking my fingers around the cold metal. The big Fifty-Niner ducked under me, and together we gave it everything we had.

  It was like trying to drag a truck up a hill, the stubborn doors refusing to budge more than a millimetre at a time. But there isn’t much that can stand up to a group of inmates with freedom in their sights, and those millimetres soon started to add up. We pulled with every last ounce of strength we had, not stopping to wipe the sweat from our eyes or to rub the cramp from our backs.

  When the doors had parted half a metre or so one of the Skulls wedged another broken piece of bunk frame between them. He hung from the bar, tugging it down from a diagonal to a horizontal and in doing so forcing the doors apart by another few centimetres.

  ‘Sorted,’ he said, turning to Bodie with his thumb raised.

  There was a click from inside the cab, then the sound of something turning – like an electric drill. Too late I realised what it was.

  The machine gun on the ceiling of the elevator spewed out a burst of fire and noise and I watched the Skull literally evaporate. An invisible stream of bullets punched what was left of his body across the yard, tearing chunks of stone from the floor before thumping into the bonfire like a giant fist. The blast cut through the metal bar holding the doors open, and with a grating crunch they slid shut. Only the upended toilet seat stopped them from closing completely, and through the sliver I could see the rotating barrel of the gun spin to a halt, lazy whispers of smoke curling out from the holes.

  Bodie was the only one to move. He started off towards the fire, calling the Skull’s name with such urgent, sobbing cries that I couldn’t make out what it had been. He only stumbled a few steps before he realised how futile it was, the corpse now long buried in the hungry flames. Instead he looked down at the scar which had been clawed across the yard, blood pooling in the deepest parts of it like some nightmare canal.

  I turned away, frightened that if I watched for much longer I might go mad. Instead I looked at Zee, slumped against the wall beside the doors, so grey I thought I could see right through him. He lifted his head, the flames reflected in his liquid eyes like an oil fire on water. He had to spit his words through a choked throat.

  ‘Now we know why they left the elevator down.’

  DAMNED

  It felt like forever before anyone remembered how to move. The entire prison was a mausoleum, not even a whisper daring to break the silence. Eventually Bodie looked up from the ruined floor, gazing once at the bonfire, which had become a funeral pyre for his friend, then at us. His face twitched as it tried to find the right expression – morphing through such extremes of grief and fear and rage that it looked like there was something crawling beneath his skin. He lurched towards me, and for a moment I saw murder in his eyes, as though he thought I was responsible for what had happened, or he wanted to take it out on the nearest thing to a blacksuit he had. To my relief he barged past and slammed a fist against the elevator doors, seeming to swallow all his emotions in one stuttered gulp before turning to face the yard.

  ‘Now what?’ he asked, his voice shaky but his tone firm.

  ‘That shouldn’t have …’ said Zee quietly. ‘It … The armed response was switched off, and with the control room the way it is I don’t see how they could have turned it back on.’

  ‘Warden’s quarters,’ I said. ‘He must have his own command system.’

  ‘No,’ Zee replied, shaking his head. ‘If that’s the case then why haven’t all the guns been blazing? Don’t make sense, not unless …’ He paused for thought, ignoring the prompts from everyone around him. ‘The gun in the elevator must operate on a different circuit. It must be programmed to fire automatically if the doors are opened with force.’ He swore, banging his head against the wall.

  ‘You can fix it, right?’ asked Bodie. ‘Same way you fixed the doors?’

  ‘No way,’ was Zee’s blunt response. ‘To do that I’d either have to get inside the cabin or, more likely, get to the controls at the top of the shaft. Christ, like we honestly thought it would be as simple as breaking through the doors.’

  Bodie turned to me, everyone in the yard seeming to follow his line of sight until my skin crawled with the force of their expectation.

  ‘I … I don’t know,’ I whispered. ‘The elevator’s the only way up. We have to find a way to get in.’

  ‘Maybe you want to volunteer next time?’ he snapped.

  ‘We could make a shield or something,’ said Simon. ‘Out of metal. One of the surfaces from the kitchen maybe.’

  ‘You saw the way that gun cut through the bar,’ Zee said. ‘And through the rock. Must be fifty calibre at least. It will tear any shield to shreds, along with whoever’s behind it.’

  Bodie winced, that flash of anger appearing as a dark shadow behind his eyes. He started to pace, his entire body tensed like a spring. I tried to think of another plan,anything that wou
ld get us out of here, but my mind was locked up tighter than a cell door. There was nothing there but a growing sense of futility. Just to fill the silence I threw out a few meaningless words.

  ‘Maybe it’s worth a try. If we can hide behind something until we get inside the elevator then maybe we can deactivate the gun. I don’t know.’

  ‘And watch someone else die?’ Bodie said.

  ‘Did you honestly think we’d get out without some sacrifices?’ I spat back, my own temper fraying. ‘You think I haven’t lost friends? We all have. We just have to deal with it and move on. We can mourn them when we’re out there.’

  I pointed up, pulling back when Bodie came at me. He planted his hands on my chest and pushed hard before storming towards the centre of the yard. I watched him go, then turned to the Skulls.

  ‘What?’ I asked them. They looked nervously at each other before one found the courage to speak.

  ‘That was his brother,’ he said. I felt my heart drop from my chest, sinking all the way to my feet and leaving me hollow inside. Bodie was standing as close to the flames as he could, and even from this distance I could see his body shaking. I wanted to go to him, say something to make it better. I’d seen so many people die since coming to Furnace, boys who had become my brothers. But to lose actual flesh and blood, I couldn’t even begin to imagine what that was like.

  ‘Leave him to it,’ said Simon, as if he was reading my mind. ‘Nothing you can do. We just got to figure out a way past that turret.’

  ‘How?’ I spat. ‘How the hell do we get inside?’

  He didn’t speak. Nobody did. But I had no idea that I was about to find out in one of the worst ways possible,no idea that our answer would come in the shape of the most terrifying nightmare Furnace Penitentiary had ever unleashed upon its inmates.

  ‘Any luck?’

  Ten minutes after Bodie’s brother had died I was crouched down against the wall beside the elevator doors, studying the blueprint of the prison laid out before me as if I didn’t know it was useless. The knotted white lines were like clumps of plant roots and I kept waiting for them to sprout out across the torn paper, a new escape route blossoming from nowhere. But there was just the single stalk of the elevator shaft leading to the surface. Everything else was buried deep beneath the ground, us alongside it.

  ‘Alex, any luck?’ Simon repeated, leaning over me and perusing the plans himself.

  I shook my head, turning my bleary eyes out into the yard. The Skulls and the Fifty-Niners were holding court close by, talking in hushed tones. I hoped they were coming up with more than I was. A gargling from Zee’s stomach a few minutes ago had reminded him of his hunger, sending him careening off towards the trough room in search of leftovers. Bodie hadn’t moved from the fire, so motionless now that he looked like a graveyard carving silhouetted against the setting sun.

  ‘I still say the shield idea is the best we’ve got,’ Simon went on, running his large hand over the elevator doors but careful to stay away from the centre. ‘We could use sheets to bind together three or four surfaces from the kitchen. That’s bound to hold up for the few seconds we need to get inside.’

  ‘The gun rotates,’ I answered, not really listening to my own words. ‘We can’t get past it if it shoots us wherever we stand.’

  ‘Then we blow it up,’ he persisted.

  ‘And risk sealing off our only way out? Come on, Simon.’

  ‘All I’m saying is that we’d better think of something fast,’ he said. I thought he was going to mention the warden and the blacksuits climbing up from below, but instead he nodded towards the gang members. I glanced up, suddenly nervous at the way they kept peering over at us.

  ‘They wouldn’t,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t see what choice they have,’ Simon muttered.

  I used the wall to lever myself up, walking over to the huddle of whispering kids. They fell silent when they saw me approach, looking at me with a strange mix of anxiety and determination.

  ‘Thought of a plan?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, we’re putting a little something together,’ replied one through a sneer. ‘Why don’t you and your buddy go and wait by the elevator. We’ll be with you in a minute.’

  ‘It won’t do you any good,’ I said, my hackles raised, my arms suddenly tensed by my side. ‘You think the warden’s going to let you go just like that if you kill us? You know what he’s like, what he’s capable of. He’ll skin you alive for what you did to his blacksuits.’

  ‘Oh, and you think sitting down here with our asses in our hands is gonna end us up any better?’ said another of the Skulls. They began to fan out, the group opening up like a claw ready to snatch me. ‘Ain’t no way to the surface, man.’

  ‘Better staying alive in here than dropping dead trying to skip,’ said a Fifty-Niner. ‘I ain’t no martyr.’

  I lifted my hands, ready for them. This wasn’t what I wanted, but I knew I was more than a match for these guys, so long as the rest of the prison didn’t decide to join in. The adrenaline began to pump through my veins again, carrying the nectar with it. The darkness inside me seemed to revel in the thought of combat, drawing a crimson veil over my vision and making me clench my fists so hard that I could feel nails piercing skin. The gang members eyed each other nervously but they didn’t stop advancing.

  ‘Go get the little one,’ said the Skull who had spoken first, nodding towards the trough room. This time the wave of nectar that pulsed through my head made me growl, a deep throbbing roll of thunder which turned the boys to stone.

  For what must have been a full minute we stood there, deadlocked, tensed, like two opposing dams ready to burst. It was only when the fizz of static filled the prison that we stepped off, the Skulls backing away as they watched the cracked video monitor above the elevator doors power on. The white Furnace logo floated lazily on its bed of black as if waiting for the entire prison to gather round, then parted to reveal a face.

  At first I didn’t recognise him, the warden so pale, so drawn that it looked like his mask of flesh was slipping away from the bone beneath. His eyes were still black pits that promised an eternity of suffering, but they seemed to flicker from dark to light and back again as though the power that fuelled them was running out. The bruises had spread across his nose and cheeks, and there was a thin trail of black blood winding its way down from one nostril. His tongue flashed across his upper lip, as if tasting the dark fluid, and when he smiled it was smeared across his teeth.

  ‘We’ll kill them,’ yelled the Skull before the warden had a chance to speak. The camera beneath the screen was still smoking, but he must have had others trained on us because the words made him laugh – a dry hiss that sounded more like a dying breath. Somewhere behind him, broadcast into the yard through hidden speakers, we heard a gunshot. The noise seemed to startle the warden, his eyes becoming just eyes for a heartbeat before once again fading into endless shadows.

  ‘Too late,’ he said, more gunfire erupting out of sight. ‘I asked you for one simple thing. I asked you to bring me the traitors, so that we could forget this whole sorry mess. I promised you leniency, mercy even.’

  ‘Somebody do them,’ said the Skull, but nobody in the yard was moving. The sight of the warden looking so weak had us all hypnotised, like rabbits caught in the headlights.

  ‘I was willing to forgive your crimes, to let life go on without punishment,’ he continued, wiping his hand across his face as the trickle of blood suddenly became a stream. ‘But you have chosen another path.’

  I thought I heard another noise from the screen, the sound of metal striking rock. As it grew louder, however, I realised it was something falling down the elevator shaft. There was a ringing clang as it thudded onto the roof of the cab, gradually ebbing into silence. I glanced at Simon, who was moving warily away from the doors. Above him, looming over us like a giant, the warden peeled open his lips again.

  ‘You have made that choice,’ he said through his soulless smile. ‘It is too la
te to turn back. The time for forgiveness and redemption is over. Yes, you have made your choice and you now have to live with it. Not that any of you will live past tonight.’

  A groan of fear shuddered across the yard, echoing off the walls. At least I thought it was an echo until the sound came again, that same grating roar that we had heard before. It was closer now, a bestial snarl punctuated only by the percussive clank of more metal falling onto the elevator roof. This time everyone took a stumbling step back.

  ‘There is no way out of Furnace Penitentiary,’ the warden said, emphasising every word. ‘Because I would see you all die in here before you set foot outside of this prison. There will be more criminals to fill your cells, more children to take your place. Life will go on just as it did before. But you,’ he paused as if he too could hear the raw, wet screams which dropped down the elevator shaft,‘your time is now over.’

  There was a series of deafening crunches high above our heads, causing the very walls of the prison to tremble and sending curtains of dust spiralling down from the shadows. The sound was like explosives being detonated, the bangs muffled by thick rock. But deep inside me I knew the source of the noise was something far worse than dynamite. No, whatever the warden was sending would have none of the mercy of fire.

  It was something big, something living, falling fast. I thought about the words I’d heard from the phone back in the warden’s office, that impossible promise.

  I am coming for you.

  The warden seemed to read my mind, and like so many times before I felt his eyes boring into mine, dirty fingers in my brain.

  ‘Alfred Furnace sends his regards,’ he said, his eyes so dark, his lips curling back so much, that his face became a skull. ‘Allow me to introduce you to the berserkers.’

  There was another bone-shattering crunch from the shaft, powerful enough to rip a ragged gash down the rock. The screen shattered, the warden’s grin splintered into a million shards of glass that sliced across the yard. The elevator doors ballooned outwards like they were made of rubber, a fountain of smoke and sparks concealing what lay beyond.